It will most certainly be the bizarre dust-up with center DeMarcus Cousins that takes center stage in the wake of the firing of Kings coach Paul Westphal, but the truth is a lot simpler than that.

It goes something like this: Westphal was fired because he wasn’t doing a very good job.

DeMarcus Cousins, left, may have caused issues, but Paul Westphal's team was a mess on both sides of the ball. (AP Photo)

True, Cousins did not make things easy on Westphal. The shouting match and alleged trade demand in the locker room after a loss to Knicks last week highlighted their broken relationship, marked by more than a year of insubordination and flouting of team rules by Cousins—arguably the Kings’ best young player and undoubtedly the franchise’s biggest headache. That torpedoed Westphal’s ability to help properly develop Cousins on the floor, and it ate away at his authority in the locker room. It’s hard to coach that way.

Westphal could not directly control Cousins’ behavior, but the real problem was that Westphal wasn’t even doing much with the things he could control. The offense was disjointed, with the Kings ranking 28th in field-goal percentage (39.2) and 29th in assists (96 in seven games).

And the Kings were a mess on defense, too. They started the year with a promising win over the Lakers, but then lost five of their next six, and in those losses, they allowed a whopping 107.2 points per game. A brutal defensive effort in Memphis on Tuesday (113 points allowed on 54.9 percent shooting) was followed by an even worse effort in a 27-point loss in Denver (110 points on 60.5 percent shooting).

In a statement announcing the removal of Westphal, general manager Geoff Petrie said, “Unfortunately, the overall performance level of the team has not approached what we felt was reasonable to expect. I wish him the best in his future endeavors.”

As much as the Cousins situation highlighted Westphal’s issues as coach, it was the “overall performance level of the team” that did Westphal in. The Kings were 51-120 overall in Westphal’s tenure, and there were rumors dating back to the summer that Westphal would not be brought back this season. The Kings figured they were paying Westphal either way, so they might as well give him one last shot to pull the team together.

It didn’t happen. The young players Westphal had been brought in to mold were not improving. In fact, with rookie of the year Tyreke Evans as a primary example, they were getting worse—Evans has not developed a perimeter shot, his passing hasn’t improved, and he has only gotten increasingly confused about his role on the team. And he is not alone. Former Kings like Spencer Hawes of the Sixers and Kevin Martin of the Rockets didn’t exactly thrive under Westphal, and have done much better with their new teams.

At least part of the blame, too, should go to Petrie himself, who has long had a strong foothold with the Maloof family, the team’s owners. Petrie earned himself a lot of capital when the Chris Webber-Mike Bibby-Peja Stojakovic-Vlade Divac Kings got to the brink of the NBA Finals in 2002. But that was a decade ago. Surely, Petrie has used up that capital and needs to start showing some results.

The best way to get those results is for the new coach to reach Cousins and get him to be the consistent, productive big man he could so obviously be. Cousins’ reputation has gone through the wringer in the last week, and there is reason for that. But he is hardly the only reason Westphal is out of a job.